


Hummingbirds Under His Skin

by jerseydevious



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Past Harvey Dent/Bruce Wayne, but he fucks up, two guys bein bis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22041871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerseydevious/pseuds/jerseydevious
Summary: Bruce and Dick have a conversation about being bisexual.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 84
Kudos: 708





	Hummingbirds Under His Skin

**Author's Note:**

> Incoming gay

Harvey Dent at eighteen was on the cusp of becoming a man, and he looked every inch the part, and it was the looking that Bruce became enraptured with. 

Harvey had an easy way about him, a smooth happiness that glided over the internal turmoil Bruce knew existed; after years of attending Gotham Academy together as the only friend the other had, Bruce had made a few deductions, a few leaps of thought, but a leap of thought wouldn’t put Mr. Dent in jail for child abuse. Harvey would never testify. The injustice of it burned in him. Bruce tried to help in whatever way he could, and if it meant dragging anyone who said a word against Harvey out of their beds by their hair—if it meant meeting them a block away from the school and sneaking out into the night to knock their teeth down their throat—Bruce’s reputation could withstand the hit, and Harvey would never have to know why people shied away from him in the halls, just that they left him alone. That was enough, for Bruce. If Harvey suspected, he never said a word.

Harvey had always had that smooth happiness to him, that kind that made him pleasant to be around, and how he managed it while shouldering the weight of his father’s massive expectations, Bruce would never know. It was just that he’d been gangly, baby-faced, with a patchy mustache and a smattering of zits until he’d hit eighteen; when Bruce and Harvey shipped off to Princeton together, Harvey was three inches taller than Bruce and filling out, and Bruce could not stop looking at him. The long, lean line of him as he stretched his arms high over his head, the way his shirt rucked up just a bit revealing a tan expanse of flat stomach, and whenever he brushed shoulders with Bruce—the electric way Bruce’s skin would tingle.  _ Do that again, please god do that again.  _

He got very affectionate with Harvey, the first semester of the two that Bruce spent at Princeton—finding excuses to touch, always chasing that electricity. If Harvey noticed—if anything, anything at all, Harvey seemed to reciprocate. A friendly shove, the shoulder bumping, flicks on the ear and playful wrestling to blow off steam, all of it felt like lightning, like there were hummingbirds under his skin. 

“What are you thinking about?”

Bruce turned. Nightwing was crouched on the grate of a fire escape above him, the slice of the baby blue in his suit bright against the shadows, the white of his lenses almost glowing in the dark. The arc of the bird splashed across Dick’s chest was something Bruce had always detested, because it always seemed to him to be like a target, always seemed to him like the place the butchers would take aim at first. He kept his opinions to himself. It was better than having a baby blue collar blocking his peripheral vision, at least, and there was more camouflage, here, than the last iteration of Nightwing’s suit.

“College,” Bruce answered, truthfully. He turned back to the scene across the street, with Commissioner Gordon folding the man that had once been Harvey Dent into the back of a cop car, the red and blue lights reflecting off of the yellowed teeth from Harvey’s scoured-away lip. Harvey leaning over him, whispering,  _ just trust me, Bruce. _

There was the creaking of leather, a soft grunt, and the splash of gritty groundwater as boots landed in it. Bruce turned around—Nightwing was behind him, now, arms crossed over his chest. His mouth was an even, thin line. “As much as I love it when you get sentimental and bitter about the fact that I dropped out of Hudson, and by ‘love it’ I mean ‘would rather have a root canal’, can we consider maybe not doing that?”   
  


Bruce snorted. “You’re safe,” he said, “if only because I need your help back at the Cave.”

Dick grinned and flicked a hand. “The big bad Bat needs help from little old me?” he crooned.   
  


“You’re pushing it.”

“You’re the one who needs my help, not the other way around. Maybe I want to hear you say it again.”   
  


Bruce tilted his head and smirked. “Little shit,” he said, fondly. 

“Why college, though?” Dick asked. 

Bruce nodded to the cop car as it pulled from the curb, taking Commissioner Gordon and Harvey Dent with it, sirens and lights fading away. “I went to college with Harvey. We were roommates.”

Dick whistled. “Jeepers, B.”

Bruce turned on his heel so he was facing Dick. “Liar,” he said, flatly. The tell was in the unbridled shock of Dick’s statement—if he had been genuinely surprised, he would have been loathe to show it.

Dick grinned, albeit a little sheepishly. “So I maybe looked into some Princeton records, sue me. You were dead, okay, it wasn’t prying. Can I just point out, it’s pretty damn hypocritical of you to get on my case about dropping out when you dropped out, just saying—you might have lasted longer than me, but, total hypocrite.”

Bruce gritted his teeth. “You are not me.”

“I mean, no kidding,” Dick said. “I have the superior sense of style.”

“You had a mullet for several years.”

Dick’s answering smile was utterly crocodilian. “When I was digging through your Princeton records I came across an interesting photo of you, with glittery yellow eyeshadow. Gotta say, not your color, man.”

“Hn.”

Dick clapped his hands. “Ha! I’ve got you backed in a corner, Brucester, and you can’t escape. I win. Hand to me my victory. And fuck you, I’m proud of that mullet. It was positively luscious.” 

Bruce didn’t respond, and Dick didn’t press forward. Bruce slunk around the corner to the alleyway where the Batmobile was parked and unlocked it with the key from his belt. 

“Can I drive?” Dick asked. 

Bruce stilled. “Why on Earth would I allow that.”

Dick patted the Batmobile’s hood. “The only thing I miss from being Batman is driving this fucker, let me tell you. And sometimes I miss Damian.”

Bruce sighed and tossed the keys to Dick, who caught them and gleefully slid over the hood to get to the driver’s side door. Bruce doubled back around the hood and slid into the passenger’s seat, on edge in an unnameable, internal way. 

“I want to hear more about glittery eyeshadow Bruce,” Dick said. The Batmobile roared to life under his hands, and he whooped, slapping the steering wheel. “God, this is the best thing you’ve ever made.”

“It makes me uncomfortable when you call me God.”   
  


Dick chuckled. “Shut up, you make the worst jokes. But no, for real, I want to know more about your glittery eyeshadow.”

“You have a fixation.”

Dick shrugged. The Batmobile pulled out of the alleyway and zipped onto the street, engine rumbling thunderously. “I just feel like there’s more to the story.”   
  


“It was the eighties,” Bruce said. “That’s the story.”   
  


Dick clucked his tongue. “For real?”   
  


“No. But the story is mine, not yours.”

“And we’re back to how I’m not you, which is obvious to anyone with eyes, because you are roughly the size of a kodiak bear and I am not,” Dick said. 

“That’s not what I meant,” Bruce snapped. 

Dick stiffened, his grip tightening on the steering wheel. “Alright. So what did you mean?”   
  


Bruce scowled out of the window, watching his city swirl by around him, every inch of it as familiar to him as his own body. “I was… terrified,” Bruce said. “I handled it badly.”

“Go on,” Dick said, when Bruce fell silent. 

“I dropped out of Princeton because I was asked to,” Bruce said. “I was not a star student, I am sure that was in the records, but I was not—I was not failing. I was asked to drop out. Things did not—go well—for me, following that. I was scared the same would happen to you.”

“I won’t ask,” Dick said. “I don’t need to know.”   
  


Bruce felt his back stiffen. It ached, where Bane had snapped it like a toothpick, acid crawling from that shatterpoint up the column of it. “You already know, don’t you.”

“I just know hospital records,” Dick said, softly. “And I—Bruce, I never would have… while you were alive. Like the Princeton thing. But I used to—I don’t know, it was kind of morbid, but while you were lost in time I would track down records, and read them, and that was one I stumbled across, okay? That was just—I swear to God, Bruce, I’m sorry. I never would have read something that personal while you were still alive. I just—I missed you.”

The skin on Bruce’s face felt raw, flayed. His lungs heaved ash in and out. He thought again of Ethiopia—he thought again of Jason, of his son, the corpse in his arms, the urge to leap in after him, to follow Jason six feet under, he had felt for months afterward. Passingly, in the years afterward. Walking out of Princeton had been nothing. Walking out of Princeton and putting himself in the hospital had been idiotic, pathetic—he had been a child, with a child’s conception of the world, with no idea what true loss was. He hadn’t held his son’s corpse, he hadn’t carried it home. His lungs hadn’t yet been coated in ash. He’d thought he’d known what suffering was.

“It is fine,” was all Bruce managed to say. “I was dead.”   
  


The Batmobile took a corner fast and sharp. “I’m sorry, Bruce,” Dick said. “But I get it. Why you were scared. What I don’t get is why you still beat me up for it, even now that you know it wasn’t like that.”

“Saving face.”

Dick laughed a bitter, high laugh. “You’re a bit of a bastard sometimes. I love you anyway, but you’re a bit of a bastard.”

“It was unbearable to me,” Bruce said, “to—to allow you to see that fear. I had already lost… so much respect from you. Losing more was unbearable. _ Is  _ unbearable.”

The Batmobile rolled to a stop at an empty intersection. 

“Is this really necessary,” Bruce growled. 

Dick grinned. “You’re the one who let me drive, and I am a very safe driver. Ex-cop, remember?”

Bruce waited in tense silence until the light flicked to green, and the Batmobile soared forward, racing through the streets and dipping and weaving around other cars towards the Manor. 

_ Just trust me, Bruce,  _ Harvey had said, leaning over him. Bruce could smell the beer on his breath, or maybe that was his own—he couldn’t recall seeing Harvey with a drink, but he himself had indulged in quite a few. The excitement thrumming through Bruce’s heart, the fear, the hummingbirds that lived in him. Harvey’s lips were soft, waxy with strawberry chapstick.  _ First kiss, _ Bruce had said, breathlessly, their foreheads craned together. The December wind had blurred Harvey’s words, but Harvey had laughed and said,  _ so I’m the best kisser you’ve ever met. _

_ You don’t know if that’s true, _ and then Harvey had kissed him again, his fingers twisting in Bruce’s hair. Bruce knew enough now, knew enough looking back on it, that he’d been in love for the first time—young, idiotic love, the kind where the two of them skipped class together and snuck off campus together, spent every moment they could together, but it had been love. It had burned as love did. 

“You have an unhappy look on your face,” Dick said, idly. 

The buildings whorling past them had become trees, tall, with black bark and bare branches scraping at the sky. “College,” Bruce answered, truthfully. 

“You really were roommates with Two-Face?” Dick asked.

“I’ve known him since I was young. He was my friend.”

Dick chuckled. “Batman and Two-Face, roommates. That’s kind of hilarious.”

“You already knew. You were sneaking through my records,” Bruce said, softly, staring resolutely out the windshield. He wasn’t angry, truly—it was the least he would have expected a Robin to do. He knew Tim had taken a jaunt through Bruce’s records, himself. He remained unsure of Damian, whether Damian would run the risk of ruining the image of his father that had been built in his mind, or if the value of the information outweighed the broken expectations. 

Dick offered him a sidelong look. “So what if I told you a story,” he said. 

“You may.”

The Batmobile curved around a long bend. “Imagine you’re Dick Grayson, age fourteen. You lead your own team, the Teen Titans. You’re just hitting puberty, you’re just discovering attraction is a thing, and you fall head-over-heels for Kid fuckin’ Flash. He’s cool, he’s just a little older than you, he’s got everything. And I mean head-over-heels, I had a crush on Wally until I was seventeen. I might still have the remnants of that crush on him, I don’t know. I asked him out, once, because I thought—I actually thought, once, that he might be something other than straight. He thought it was a joke.”

Bruce’s heart bled for him—his boy, so young and idealistic and hopeful. Still his boy, less young now, but still as hopeful. “And this is relevant how.”

“I don’t think you ever fall out of love with the first person you’re in love with,” Dick said. “And I never told you about any of this. I never told anyone. Because you never had that conversation with me, that being bisexual was fine, and now that I know that wasn’t just straight ignorance on your part, I might be a little fucking peeved.”

“I couldn’t,” Bruce snapped. 

“Oh, fuck you too,” Dick said, heatedly. “I get you have emotional hang-ups all over the place, but this? This was too damn important. I felt like I couldn’t trust you with who I was because you never made sure to tell me it was okay, and now I’m seeing gay heart-eyes all over your face as you reminisce about Harvey goddamn Dent—”

“I  _ couldn’t,” _ Bruce snarled, “because they would have taken you away. It was my mistake. I made you my ward, instead of adopting you outright. If you had been openly gay—if, God forbid, I had been—they would have taken you from me. They would have found a reason.”

Dick shook his head. “You could’ve told me that,” he said. 

“I should have.”

“But I’m not you, right? You didn’t want me to be the way that you were,” Dick said. “Because you hate it. So you didn’t even have the ‘you have to hide this’ conversation with me. You just didn’t say anything.”

“I didn’t,” Bruce said, quietly. 

“Don’t think,” Dick said, fervently, “for a second, that I didn’t know you loved me. I’ve always known that. I’ll always know that. You proved that to me, in every possible way. That was never the question. It’s—”

“Whether I loved all of you,” Bruce said. 

He had spent years waiting for Alfred to pull him aside with the eyes that said  _ what kind of predator are you, _ he had spent years as a child and then as an adult waiting for Alfred to put the pieces together—why were there no girlfriends for so long? Why had Bruce been so close to Harvey, why had he left Princeton at all? And after he’d taken in Dick, it had seemed useless to mention it, because Bruce could never behave in that manner again, couldn’t bear the loss of Dick, couldn’t bear to shame Dick in that way.

The Batmobile pulled over to the edge of the road and stopped. 

“Why,” Bruce said. 

“Take off the cowl,” Dick said. “I need to look at your face for this.”

Bruce hesitated, briefly, but he considered the depth of his failure to Dick and pulled the cowl off anyway. It was a small fraction of what he owed to his boy, this unendingly bright, phenomenally brilliant, profoundly annoying boy.

“You said that, ‘whether I loved all of you’, like you knew what that was like,” Dick said. 

“I do.”

“You’re not out to Alfred?” Dick asked, incredulously.

Bruce snorted. “Of course not.”

Dick peeled off his mask and tossed it on the dashboard. “Holy shit. I mean, just, holy fuck.”

“This entire night,” Bruce said, “you have made outstanding use of your deductive reasoning. I would like to note that, while I am proud of your skill, I would appreciate it if you would stop applying your reasoning to  _ me.” _

“Al thinks the world of you, Bruce,” Dick said, rubbing at his eyes. “Christ. He’d never think less of you, not for anything like this.”

Bruce felt his stomach turn—but he had disappointed Alfred in the past, and deeply. In all likelihood Alfred thought less of him now than he had ten years ago, or twenty years ago. Bruce took that knowledge like an ice pick to the chest. It was no less, perhaps, than what he deserved, the pain that radiated through him as if his sternum had cracked and pierced his heart, as if his heart had been pummeled into sudden cardiac arrest.

“I think this conversation is over.”

“I think the fuck not,” Dick said, twisting in his seat so one leg was propped up in the chair and the other was flat against the floor. “Who are you out to, if not Alfred?”

“It is not,” Bruce said, sourly, “any of your business.”

“Just humor me,” Dick said. “We’re just two bisexual men having a very bisexual chat.”

“Harvey. Clark. You. One other.”

Dick raised a brow. His expression was distinctively impish. “Who?”

“I am not naming names.”

“The curiosity will eat at me forever,” Dick whined. “But, you know—wait a second. Is that why you let John Constantine hang around the Manor that one time, are you—oh my God, look at your face, that’s totally it, holy fucking shit.”

Bruce gave Dick the most withering glare he could muster. Dick grinned broadly at him anyway. 

“My skills tonight are kind of off the charts,” Dick said. “So Alfred doesn’t know. You were asked to drop out of Princeton, right? And that was probably related to you and Harvey.”

“The dean threatened to take away his scholarship. Behind closed doors, of course,” Bruce folded his hands in his lap, cloying decades-old bitterness crawling through his chest. “They had no grounds to expel me, no evidence. So they forced my hand.”   
  


Dick scrubbed his jaw. “And I bet you never let on to Harvey that anything had happened.”   
  


“Of course not. He was a star student. They’d never find a reason to expel him. It was a hollow threat, and I should have known.”

Dick reached out a hand and squeezed Bruce on the shoulder. His touch was grounding in a way Bruce welcomed. “Hindsight is twenty-twenty, B.”

Bruce raised a hand and squeezed Dick’s wrist. “For what it is worth. I am… sorry. For the ways I have failed you. I would like to be someone you can discuss this with, that you feel safe with. I… am sorry, for not having been that already.”

Dick leaned over and pressed a kiss to Bruce’s cheek, and then settled back in his seat with a huff. “If you want to hear all my relationship woes, that’s on you. Let me get you caught up. So the next man I was madly in love with was Roy, but he was not my first kiss with a man, let me tell you. College was an adventurous time for more than just you, buddy.”

Bruce waved a hand. “Oh, no, what have I signed up for.”

Dick poked him in the shoulder. “One thing we’re going to work on,” he said, “is you being more embarrassed about me talking about relationships with men than you are when I talk about relationships with women. I’ve talked to you about Kory. I’ve talked to you about Babs, and you don’t react like that. And I get it, that took me a while, too. But I had Donna’s help.”

“She is good for you.”

Dick whistled. “No kidding. I think the reason I have so few issues with being bisexual is because of Donna, honestly, and I know she gets a lot of that from Diana. Maybe you should talk to her, sometime.”

“Hn.”

“But not before Alfred.”

“You,” Bruce said, lowly, “are a bossy little shit.”

Dick laughed. “It’s all ‘cause I love you, man.”

“Not nearly as much as I love you.”

Dick stopped and leaned his head back against the headrest, smiling, dimples carving deep hollows into his cheeks. After a moment he leaned over and patted Bruce on the knee. “Good talk, sport,” he said. 

Bruce chuckled. “Quiet, you.”

Dick gunned the Batmobile’s engine and pulled off of the shoulder. “But you’ll talk to Alfred sometime, right?”

“Interesting, that you’ve deemed this necessary.”

Dick nodded sharply. “I have. I have deemed it necessary. Because I think everyone should get to hear what you told me tonight, and that’s exactly what he’s going to tell you, I know it.”

_ How do you know, _ Bruce wanted to ask.  _ How do you know, how can you possibly know, I’ve spent decades with him and I have never known for sure. _ But maybe it was Dick’s preternatural ability of deduction at work again, his incredible mind observing a situation and taking it apart into countless tiny pieces, re-fitting them back together in a solution. Sometimes Bruce found himself jealous of Dick’s intelligence, but most of the time, he was simply proud. 

“I am sorry,” Bruce said. 

Dick drummed his hands on the steering wheel for a moment before answering. “For what?”

For failing you, Bruce thought. “For dying,” he said. 

“You didn’t ask for Darkseid to punt you back through time like a bat-football, did you?” Dick asked. 

“I did not.”

“Then you’ve got nothing to be sorry for. I’m over it.”   
  


Bruce’s mouth turned downwards. “Do not lie to me,” he said. 

“Mostly over it,” Dick corrected. 

“Let me know when you need me.”

Dick swallowed, audibly, and said, “Yeah. Yeah, I will. As long as you talk to Alfred.”

“We have a deal,” Bruce said. 

When they finally arrived at the Cave, Dick hopped out of the driver’s side, slid over the hood, and tackled Bruce in a hug before Bruce had taken two steps out of the car. His arms around Bruce were warm, and Bruce could smell the soft scent of his coconut shampoo. Carefully, Bruce returned the hug, pressing his hand flat to the spot between Dick’s shoulder blades. “You are too damn smart for your own good,” he murmured. 

“I know,” Dick said, cheekily. He backed away, still grinning. “And you might ought to talk to Tim, you know, there’s something up with him and Kon. I honestly can’t tell. As much as I love Tim, sometimes he’s such a closed book.”

Bruce sighed. “I am glad I am not the only one.”

They wandered upstairs, reheating leftovers from Alfred’s dinner and eating on the couch—after that, Dick curled up against Bruce’s side and fell asleep halfway through a movie Bruce wasn’t paying much attention to. He was paying more attention to stroking Dick’s hair, running his fingers through it and gently working out the tangles, listening to Dick’s slowing breathing.  _ You are safe here, _ Bruce wanted to tell him.  _ You are safe here, and you always will be, as long as I live. _

  
And then he thought, briefly, of Harvey Dent, of the softness of his hair, of the one crooked tooth, of the mole on his forehead, and the months they’d spent where every spare moment they seemed to have their limbs tangled together—he spared a thought for the man he’d loved once, the man who had given him hummingbirds under his skin, the man who it had crushed him to walk away away from.  _ You would be safe here, _ Bruce wanted to tell him.  _ You would be safe here, and you always would be, as long as I live.  _

**Author's Note:**

> Okay OKAY OKAY OKAY I get it yes, I absolutely need to update Zoo, I just really wanted to get this fic out of the way


End file.
